The accumulation of waste materials is becoming an increasingly serious problem throughout the world. A major contributor to this problem is the accumulation of various packaged goods and particularly food which is packaged in metallic and non-metallic containers and which, when discarded occupy an inordinate amount of space. Furthermore, packaged food which is permitted to accumulate as waste can lead to contamination of the earth and ground water after it has deteriorated over an extended period of time.
It has been proposed to recycle refuse into fertilizer by various methods, such as, disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,653,871 and 3,736,120 to A. Tempe. Also, it has been proposed to subject cans to a shredding process primarily for the purpose of separation of paper labels from the cans as proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,044 to D. H. Weitzman et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,284,514 to D. R. Wright is similarly directed to a method of rupturing containers for the purpose of treating the material inside the container but does not suggest a satisfactory way of separating the material inside of the container from the metal so that it can be recycled or converted into useful feed values. Moreover, it has been proposed to recycle materials, such as, hide waste materials combined with starch through the combined steps of dehydration and extrusion, for example, as suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,929 to C. J. Lehn et al . Other patents of interest in this area are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,905,557 to J. Degenhardt, 3,930,799 to E. W. Eweson and 3,971,306 to F. D. Wiese et al. To my knowledge, however, no one has satisfactorily devised a process and apparatus for fragmenting non-metallic containers to remove the contents for conversion into useful byproducts and particularly in such a way that the process can be carried out in a high speed, closely coordinated sequence of steps.
The separation of contents from nonmetallic containers requires somewhat different considerations than those for metallic containers, particularly in the respect that non-metallic containers are customarily composed of glass, paper or plastic which will tend to shatter into extremely small pieces making it very difficult to separate those pieces from the contents; and further, owing to the fact that non-metallic materials cannot be magnetically separated from the contents exacerbates the problem of removal of the shattered pieces or fragments from the contents.